The ARC of Happiness: What marketers can learn from the 2015 World Happiness Report

You’ve probably seen the results. Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada are the happiest nations on Earth (Syria, Burundi and Togo are the least happy).

The 2015 World Happiness Report is out, ranking countries by average happiness of its citizens. You can download it here. It’s a great report and well worth a read, but not just for geo-bragging or geo-lust. The World Happiness Report is insightful for any business for which customer happiness is important.

First, though – a recap of the rankings…

2015 World Happiness Rankings

Switzerland

Iceland

Denmark

Norway

Canada

Finland

Netherlands

Sweden

New Zealand

Australia

Israel

Costa Rica

Austria

Mexico

United States

Brazil

Luxembourg

Ireland

Belgium

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

Oman

Venezuela

Singapore

Panama

Germany

Chile

Qatar

France

Argentina

…

Afghanistan

Rwanda

Benin

Syria

Burundi

Togo

Whilst there may be little value in this summary list itself for marketers, the World Happiness Report contains at least four useful insights for marketers.

1. A Simple Measure of Customer Happiness

How do you measure happiness? The simple answer is the ‘Cantril Ladder’. Simply think of a ladder, with the best possible life for you being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0. Now rate your own current life on that 0 to 10 scale.

That’s your Happiness score, a measure of subjective well-being and life-satisfaction. So what? Well, one opportunity for marketers is to adapt the Cantril Ladder – used by the OECD – to measure customer happiness (…Think of a ladder, with the best possible product/service/brand experience for you being a 10, and the worst possible being a 0. Now rate our product/service/brand on this 0 to 10 scale). Of course, there are other proprietary measures of satisfaction the quality of experience – but why not stand on the shoulders of giants – and use the simple Cantril Ladder? If it’s good enough and useful for for the OECD and the World Happiness Report…

2. What Drives Customer Happiness

What’s perhaps more interesting for marketers is that the Happiness Report identifies the six drivers of human happiness. Together these six drivers explain three quarters of the variation of happiness in any one nation

Health (Healthy years of life expectancy)

Social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble)

Household income/GDP (per capita)

Trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business)

Although these are population level correlates of human happiness, they are insightful. Beyond communicating and delivering product/service benefits, is there an opportunity to scale the happiness ladder, and demonstrate how your product or service delivers against these higher order drivers of human happiness?

3. Emotional Drivers of Customer Happiness

The Cantril Ladder is not the only measure of human happiness; the presence of positive emotions (joy, pride) and absence of negative emotions (pain, anger and worry) matter as well as cognitive evaluations of subjective wellbeing. So in addition to using the Cantril Ladder, the World Happiness Report measures happiness emotionally, capturing whether people remember experiencing positive or negative emotions yesterday.

Could we use this insight that the presence of positive and absence of negative emotions are indicative of happiness, to measure, and more importantly deliver emotionally charged customer happiness? (think of your last product/service experience, to what degree did you experience the following emotions pride, joy, anger, worry, fear). Interestingly, the World Happiness Report found that only three of the six happiness drivers listed above, appear to drive emotional (hedonic) happiness – freedom, generosity and social support.

Overall, these two strands of human happiness – cognitive and emotional – support the core insight from psychology (self-determination theory) that human happiness has an ARC:

The ARC of Human Happiness

Autonomy (freedom)

Relatedness (social connectedness/support)

Competence (mastery)

The implication for marketers is that if customer happiness is your goal, focus not just on delivering promised benefits, but consider the ARC of human happiness – how does your product or service help the three core drivers of human happiness – autonomy, relatedness and competence?

4. Purpose and Meaning

Finally, in explaining the results, the World Happiness Report suggests that there may be a third strand to the DNA human happiness – and that is the degree we believe our life has purpose and meaning (known as eudaimonic well-being). Here the implication for marketers is that beyond product/service happiness, and in addition to cognitive and emotional happiness, we need ask ourselves how what we sell helps customers achieve their purpose and meaning in life?

Heady questions, but if we focus innovation and marketing on delivering human happiness, we’ll be doing something very special indeed.

Chartered psychologist specialising in consumer behaviour, wellbeing and technology. Certified CX professional experienced in Design Thinking. A researcher, writer and speaker, Paul is head of Digital Insight at SYZYGY.